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It's been a torrid couple of weeks for the Globe, following the shock announcement that artistic director Emma Rice would be leaving in 2018 following what would appear to be a disagreement with the theatre board over the use of amplification and lighting rigs in her productions.
It's a sad irony, then, that delightful oddity 'Comus: A Masque in Honour of Chastity' perfectly combines the winning loopiness of the Rice era with the unamplified, candlelit splendour of her predecessor Dominic Dromgoole's beloved Sam Wanamaker Playhouse.
Hey ho. Directed and adapted by Globe regular Lucy Bailey, 'Comus' is a hoot, a very, very tongue-in-cheek adaptation of a 1634 masque by John 'Paradise Lost' Milton. Bailey isn't exactly taking the piss, I don't think, but she has aggressively modernised 'Comus' to the point it would probably give Milton a small seizure (at the very least most of the jokes would surely fly over his head by about four centuries, and it is now much more a comedy play than courtly song-and-dance piece).
We open on a larky play-within-a-play, as final rehearsals for a production at Ludlow Castle are hitting some last-minute snags: Lady Alice (Emma Curtis) wants to bail from her starring role, and her dad Sir John is having to apply some serious emotional blackmail explain why they need to do this play (something about atoning for uncle Geoffrey's serial sodomizing antics).
The masque begins... and then goes very very wrong, as everyone is sucked into very strange wood, haunted by the debauched demigod Comus (Danny Lee Wynter). Comus captures Alice - or The Lady as she is now dubbed - intent on taking her virginity; her foppish brothers William and Thomas must rescue her, aided by Philip Cumbus's hilarious preening Attendant Spirit.
A commission for the real life Sir John, who really did have a brother-in-law executed for sodomy and rape, I'm sure Milton was genuinely celebrating virginity. This is fairly absurd in 2016, and Bailey takes the piss via sparky newcomer Curtis's funny, bolshy, unworldly Alice. But she also cannily alters the morality to make a serious point - 'Comus' feels less a vindication of sexual abstinence, more of consent, as Alice repeatedly tells the letchy Comus where to shove it. And there's a righteously feminist finale, as she tells her dad where he can go at the end.
'Comus' is funny, fierce, somewhat bonkers and surely the shortest production the Globe has staged in years, possibly ever. Where the Globe's indoor theatre can sometimes feel a bit worthy, 'Comus' is genuinely, really, filthy cackle laugh-out-loud. It certainly promises great things for Emma Rice's first indoor season - which make it all the sadder that we'll only have one more of them.